Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time
134 comments
·February 4, 2025binarin
M95D
You can set up a proxy server with a whitelist on the host, so it won't be completely offline. For example, to allow online games.
rspoerri
The good thing about Windows 11 requiring TPM is, that's the easiest way to prevent an unintentional upgrade. Typically you can disable TPM in the bios and prevent the OS from updating itself . Which i did as soon as i heard about that requirement :-)
ryandvm
Wild to me that a company can work on a product for twenty years, have multiple releases, and not have made any significant improvements to it beyond updated hardware support.
Like, y'all could just do a 25th Anniversary Edition of Windows 2000 and people would go ape shit for it.
jodrellblank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_XP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_10
???
STRML
Arguably, especially in the 8/10/11 era, few of these features are things that meaningfully enhance the user experience. Incredibly, we're still running NTFS and dealing with hacks on hacks on hacks. In the 8 era, a huge number of massive projects were started, promoted, and mothballed.
Arainach
You say "still" as if NTFS hasn't evolved in that time. It still has a far more capable permissions model than any Linux filesystem.
Raymond called it 21 years ago: when you change the insides, no one notices. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040525-00/?p=39...
gruez
>Incredibly, we're still running NTFS
So? Linux is still mostly on ext4, and even though there's theoretically zfs/btrfs, most people are still using ext4. Debian installer still only supports ext4. ext4 might be "newer" than NTFS (2006 vs 1993), but that's a purely naming thing. If you map ext2 and ext3 as NTFS versions[1], they have similar age. Moreover from a feature set perspective they're mostly equivalent. Both support journaling and various features like sparse files and resource forks.
Cumpiler69
>Incredibly, we're still running NTFS and dealing with hacks on hacks on hacks.
It's the painful cost of maintaining backwards compatibility.
For context, I can still install and use Winamp 2.5 from 1999 on Windows 11. That's over 25 years of backwards compatibility. Not something most people need on a daily basis but still very cool.
hulitu
> Windows 10 reintroduced the start menu
A great feature. They dumbed it down though.
> Unlike in previous versions of Windows NT, the Win32 console windows can now be resized without any restrictions.
Truly a great achievement. It took MS 2 decades.
> It can be made to cover the full screen by pressing the Alt+↵ Enter combination on keyboard.
Maybe i'm too old, but this was always working.
And the cherry on the cake: > The modern Settings app from Windows 8 continues to evolve in Windows 10,
I mean, taking a man, cutting his limbs and stuffing his mouth, hardly can be called "evolution".
cosmotic
Reintroducing a previously removed feature, like the start menu, doesnt count as a new feature
M95D
>> Unlike in previous versions of Windows NT, the Win32 console windows can now be resized without any restrictions.
>Truly a great achievement. It took MS 2 decades.
It could be resized since Win2000 I think, but not by dragging the window edges, there's a Properties dialog box accessible from the top-left icon menu. You can set the window size there. There's also a Defaults dialog that sets the properties of all future console windows.
jodrellblank
Yes all those Wikipedia articles only mention three things. Three things is all Microsoft did in twenty years. And they are all bad therefore Microsoft bad.
ryandvm
Yeah, as far as my experience is concerned, all that most of those releases did was fragment configuration, introduce the concepts of ads in your operating system, and innovate some in-fucking-scrutable technology that require me to continuously uninstall Candy Crush.
Cumpiler69
HN will never let facts stand in the way of good FUD.
ffsm8
It's Snarkiness, not FUD. Neither fear, uncertainty nor doubt involved here.
And I think everyone knew from context that the claim was strongly tongue in cheek.
Kenji
A lack of improvements I could stomach. What bothers me are the regressions! It's getting worse with every update!
fcq
Not honoring previous settings, reverting back to whatever is more convenient for Microsoft or trying to push down of our throats Copilot on every single corner might be the most infuriating thing....
LorenDB
The "location override" feature that the author complains about does not allow apps to access location even when it's turned off. Instead, it gives apps a way to change your reported location; e.g. Remote Desktop can change your reported location to match the remote computer you're accessing.
snozolli
The Windows 11 Explorer titlebar is always colored depression-gray
One of the most baffling aspects of modern Windows is that it's ridiculously hard to tell at a glance which window is active. It used to be that the active window's title bar was bright blue, and everything else was gray. These days, I have two 2560x1440 monitors, which was unimaginable back in the day, and regularly fail to identify which window is active.
Also, the modern Alt-Tab popup often takes two full seconds to appear on my machine. I can't even imagine how they managed that.
vladvasiliu
Oh, but it gets better than all the windows being the same color! Sometimes, even though the taskbar shows your window as active and you have the blinking cursor in a text area, typing won't type until you click that window!
ankurdhama
Any window that is based on good old Win32 API title bar will have proper title bar accent color (ex: Run dialog) BUT the new generation of WinUI based windows wont have this coz it looks like they render their own "header bar" or something.
WinUI right now is so bad that even resizing the window show partial blank area that you can see before the whole area gets repainted again.
vachina
Microsoft knows this and therefore focuses more on cloudifying all your apps, I.e. your windows Pc becomes a thin client for Microsoft hosted services, ensuring infinite revenue.
This is just gonna get worse with even better internet connectivity in the future, and consumers jumping on it because subscriptions requires much less cash outlay than owning hardware that runs the value generating part of the app.
psychoslave
Glad to hear they solved this all nitty point, so with these infinite revenue there will be an infinite amount of resources to trickle down to the rest of humanity! Right?
Waterluvian
I have a legal copy of Win 11 and after very carefully scraping all the garbage off of it, I had a gaming and general use system that felt… fine I guess… for months.
Then last week I got a full screen “finish setting up windows” that wants me to create a Microsoft account. I have two options: “remind me in 3 days” or “continue… and if you change your mind you can’t actually go back. You have to reboot.” So every three days I get to be interrupted by this upsell.
<long frustrated rant about what being a Big Tech engineer/designer actually signals>
dgfitz
I searched it up for you, no idea if this works:
To disable the "Make account" and "Remind me in 3 days" prompt on Microsoft, navigate to your Windows settings, then go to System > Notifications & actions; within the "Notifications" section, look for options related to "Suggest ways to finish setting up your device" or similar wording and toggle them off to prevent these reminders from appearing.
devmor
There should be a registry key or GPO setting to override this called “EnableOOBE” or something similar.
71bw
Insane how people are still using anything other than illegitimate LTSC copies. They keep spitting in your face and you keep taking it? They are not getting a single cent from me, they can rot in hell for all I care for. Give me back my Windows 7 experience...
markus_zhang
I'm glad Dell Refurbished only sells workstations with Windows 10 Pro. It's not a pleasant experience but still way better than Windows 11. I wish they had Windows LTSC though.
clircle
I'll be pirating a copy of LTSC when MS stops security updates to 10 Pro.
markus_zhang
Shhhh...
lousken
you can get keys from a reseller quite cheap
soylentcola
Not to be too pedantic, but aren't those typically being purchased under some other license that doesn't apply to you (bulk, oem, cheaper country, etc) and then resold in violation of the licensing terms?
And that's when they're not just "pirated" themselves?
Seems at that point you might as well just skip paying whatever questionable middleman in involved if you're not concerned about abiding by TOS or license.
tannhaeuser
One only needs to look at growth figures (Azure and OpenAI positive, Windows and Xbox negative) to understand Windows' trajectory against end users. Already Windows 10 22H2 (?), supposedly largely identical to Windows 11, has mindlessly shuffled setting dialogs and stuff around to confuse users and make switching off Windows updates (and "telemetry" gathering and ads) practically impossible save for disabling networking, even "Pro" versions. Fortunately there's Proton/Wine/Steam to save gaming.
It didn't have to come this far. Windows 7-10 had also decent bits not just intrusive disk encryption, "duel" boot where it prevents alternate EFI boot loaders and OSes, removing "virus" .exes without even telling, millions of pointless items in file explorer and start menus except the one that one actually is after, broken search, cringeworthy verboseness, ...
stuartd
The reason for the TPM requirement (I heard, anyway) was so they could dump a decade or so’s worth of compatability fixes. Which is fine, but dropping support for Windows 10 is just gouging from organisations who require support, and potentially leaving consumers who are ‘just fine’ with their PC and Windows 10 without security fixes - [0] ‘Windows 10 will lose security support in October 2025’
[0] https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/windows-10-will-lose-se...
gruez
>Which is fine, but dropping support for Windows 10 is just gouging from organisations who require support, and potentially leaving consumers who are ‘just fine’ with their PC and Windows 10 without security fixes - [0]
That seems... fine? Once upon a time, windows had a fixed support lifecycle of 10 years, and you had pay to upgrade to the latest version. Windows 10 was released in 2015 and will be supported until 2025. This is entirely in line with that. At least with windows 11 the upgrade is free.
stuartd
2015?! Wow. Did not realise that. (I have to use Windows for work, but that’s Server 2022). You are quite correct, that does change the perspective.
Paianni
Neither TPM 2.0 or 1.2 is required for a Server 2025 install.
Microsoft could easily disable the restriction is they wanted to.
For my personal computers I was actually buying Windows licenses up to and including Windows 10, but now I switched to alternative acquisition methods again, and mostly run Windows in VMs with GPU pass-through and disabled networking. Just an honest relationship - they don't respect me, I don't respect them.